A Case of Poverty
by thundercow
Summary: Because she is a lady, and a lady is not supposed to have dark red hands and a gun emptied of ammo. — Haru, Gokudera.
1. i: prologue

**notes** – would anyone be interested if I continued this?

* * *

**a case of poverty**

Haru stands at the altar with the whole Family watching. She smiles in the biggest way she can while holding the bouquet of flowers. The only thing that is wrong is the fact that she is just a little too far to the left.

Her dress is only purple ruffles, so unlike the white roses of the train Kyoko carries along with her glassed steps. She takes the hand of a mafia boss, smiling with rosy cheeks; Haru thinks that she looks beautiful standing there in her queenish veil, that she matches the groom down to the colour of her eyes.

They say their vows and let their lips meet; her best friend's last name is no longer Sasagawa, and the rows of onlookers roar with celebration and dab their eyes with handkerchiefs. Haru hugs Kyoko and smells the essence of true love and happiness on her skin - she would be lying if she said she wasn't happy for the bride. She embraces Tsuna as well, and when his hands wrap around her waist to return the gesture, she cannot hold back the tears any more.

"I-I'm just so happy."

The biggest lie she's ever said is born on the wedding day of her best friend.

* * *

She has two choices: fight or flight.

Kyoko has little option to concern herself over. It's not about her or about Tsuna or about their marital bonds - it's the fact that she has to take care of the little one in her womb now. The woman outgrows her foolishness with elegance, and Haru wishes that she could do the same. But Haru just holds onto Kyoko's cold hands and runs her thumb over those worried knuckles. Kyoko stands with the resilience of a statue, waiting for her decision.

"You don't have to go with me if you don't want to, Haru," she says with understanding and warmth, with the voice that Tsuna falls in love with every day.

Haru laughs and says 'silly me' when she knows this very well. But she is heavy with uncertainty, wondering if she can control herself come the time Kyoko is away and Tsuna is all battered up and broken.

* * *

"Take care of him, will you?" Kyoko asks even though she does not need to. The tears are invisible behind the strength she's cultivated from being a mafiasco's wife. Haru kisses her friend on the cheek and helps her into the backseat, binding herself to promise with one final squeeze of Kyoko's fingers.

She arms herself with two revolvers and slips a pistol under the hem of her skirt. Haru ignores Tsuna's exasperated pleas and Gokudera's incredulous snorts, and follows Yamamoto when they storm the streets. The first few times she flinches when his sword pierces through the shirt of an enemy and the blood dyes her skirt a dark, dark red. After a few weeks of countless skirmishes and dodging daggers, she gets used to the sound of screams and the recoil of a bullet when it leaves her palm. She endures a few injures, an old-fashioned arrow through her calf and a punch right below her stomach that takes too long to heal. She doesn't like it when Gokudera heaves her over his shoulder and runs along the uneven pavements of Florence, but she can't bring it in herself to argue when there's a knife stabbed into her covered heels.

Sometimes she cries into the back of his blazer (because she is a lady and a lady is not supposed to have dark red hands and a gun emptied of ammo) when he is too busy lighting dynamite to notice.

And it's funny how despite all these bruises, the blow that wounds her the most is watching Tsuna dial Japan at four in the morning, just to hear a woman's voice.


	2. ii: prologue

**notes** – thank you for the positive feedback (: here is the second half of the prologue.

* * *

If there is one thing Gokudera cannot stand (though logically speaking, there are countless atrocities in his living quarters alone that he can't stand) it is _lying_. Lies are the evidence of cowardice, of falsities and weakness and everything he strives to avoid. Whatever he feels, he shows it plain and clear on his face.

Hate, pride, displeasure, anger; like a palette of emotions, realistically.

His boss never hides fear or reluctance or disapproval, and Gokudera admires this aspect of him to a great extent – to a sacrificial, bullet-biting degree that he wishes to expand even more. Tsuna is not concerned about keeping up false appearances and brushing lint off his shoulders, he is far more taxed with proper matters (not unreliable stocks or homeless ladies or age old wine, like other families indulge in).

The Tenth doesn't conceal happiness either, and it shows plain on his face during the wedding ceremony. Gokudera squares his shoulders and stands like a victorious soldier before the crowd. His spoils of war are the wide smile on his boss' face and the quaint extravagance of the ballroom. There are flowers everywhere because Sasagawa enjoys them, and appropriate silverware and tablecloths, though hardly the most expensive type they could have procured. The Tenth is a humble man, with humble ideals and humble expectations that Gokudera admires in the most prideful way he can summon.

Of course, during the vows the baseball idiot chuckles with a definite lack of conduct and manner, but Gokudera is not in the mood to chide him. He watches his boss exchange simple diamond rings with his wife and his heart trips in his chest. He refuses to become a bawling bag of tears like the lawnhead who currently has his face buried into Yamamoto's shoulder, but the feeling crosses his mind more than once. More than he likes.

It's odd, because now Sasagawa is part of the Tenth. (And does he continue to call her Sasagawa? Not possible, not when she is now his wife. What does he call her then? He doesn't remember ever referring to her as anything else.). Gokudera thinks he might be jealous of her position, of her newfound place of importance next to Tsuna, but he does not linger on it too long. He wipes the uncertainty off his face, in time to see Haru bursting into sobs and crying into his boss' neatly ironed vest.

"I-I'm just so happy."

And Gokudera watches Sasagawa's eyelids droop a slight bit behind her pale makeup, catches her gaze flickering with an intense grief at Haru's tearful words. He figures that Kyoko Sawada has the ability to detect a liar by the transparency of their voice, too.

He keeps this fact to himself though, and it has already slipped his mind by the time Lambo and I-pin crawl up behind him and usher him to the Tenth's side. They snap a photo fit for the Family's distinguished memoirs, next to Vongola Nono and the rest of their ancient tradition. Just like the Primo generation – there is trust found in Hibari's distant stare, and love from the hands that hold Tsuna and Kyoko together, and _deceit _from the grin plastered onto Haru's face.

After the reception, he happens across a woman in a purple dress stooping on a small staircase, he finds her at the back of the mansion he rented for the occasion (classic, furnished, perfect for the grace of the Vongola). Strands of her brown hair escape from her bun with every second she shifts, her face is in her bare arms, and her shoulders shake and shake and shake.

(Though it is not cold.)

Gokudera lifts the cigarette from his lips and exhales a tired sigh. His expertise doesn't lie in comfort words and affectionate gestures, his talent lies in explosions and fires and the perfect crackling of nitro glycerin. So he just stands at underneath the tree in the garden, watching her under the summer sun of Italy. He waits with his cigarette until she wipes her red eyes with one white satin glove, rises onto her feet, and strides back into the party with a fresh paint of happiness on her face. She doesn't catch him lazing under the shade of the branches, which is poor, poor cognition on her behalf.

This changes in the next few months though, and Gokudera soon discovers he will be unable to step ten feet near her without having a pistol cocked to his skull.


	3. a spoonful of sugar

She enlists the advice of Dokuro Chrome three days before she is to follow Yamamoto and the others to investigate the going-ons of Milan. Three days before she will first point her firearm at breathing flesh, not flabby cardboard. Three days and she will understand Gokudera's sneer and Ryohei's frown and Hibari's tolerance. She has to know what will happen, what to do, what to expect, how to use the bump of her buttoned shirt and curve of her waist to her advantage.

* * *

But Chrome shakes her head and smiles in timid apology when she tells Haru that 'you cannot learn from my words, you have to feel it for yourself'. Haru sulks and shows her disappointment, but she takes Chrome's elbow in the end, and they stroll around the manor like Kyoko would have done in such a blank situation.

The young lady quietly accepts to play substitute for the absent Kyoko. She is still very little and of very few words, and holds closeted secrets. She is unlike Kyoko is many ways, with elaborate lace covering a hollow eye socket and scars that embroider her skin. But she is a simple girl with modest desires and unselfish words, and Haru wishes she could be more like her as well.

Haru wishes she could be anything more than what she is.

* * *

After being turned down by Chrome, Haru asks Bianchi for advice on the legend that is the battlefront. (Somewhere, not as deep down as it should be, Haru does not believe that there is a place in Italy where bearing the crest of the Vongola qualifies you a bullet through the heart.) But Bianchi gives her the same reply, she sits Haru down and they share English tea, and she tells her with careful thought to her words, that it is not wise to discuss the issue of fighting and killing.

"It gives you frightening expectations, or it makes you too cautious, too wary," she says before sipping her drink.

"It is better for you to experience it firsthand. Perhaps Gokudera will be willing to watch out for you," Biachi suggests as she sets the teacup down on the fine dinner table. Her hair falls over the cream of her skin, and when she says her brother's name, Haru can sense the trust of family in her words.

"Gokudera? Are you sure?" she laughs, because she does not see him as anything other than a loud, brash man with a poor habit of smoking.

"With all my heart." Bianchi adds a spoonful of sugar to Haru's cup, and that is the end of the conversation.

* * *

So that dusty midnight in Milan, Haru learns what she needs to know through practical means. She comes to understand the fear screaming in her veins and the adrenaline pounding in her chest with every step her boots grind the pavement with. She is between Yamamoto, Ryohei and the walls of an alley, struggling to keep pace with their footsteps, large and mannish and so experienced. It is not the first time she has heard gunshots and foreign curses soaring over their heads, but it is the first time she is running towards the source of danger instead of scooting far, far away.

The gun trembles in her palm, and she is unable to aim clearly for the entirety of the mission. She does manage to bullet someone's calf and use the butt of the revolver to smash the head of a man preparing to ambush Ryohei from behind, and it makes her feel the rare sensation of accomplishment.

Suddenly, someone takes her by the waist and she is being dragged back and down behind a barricade of trash cans. She smells nicotine and feels Gokudera's fingers dig into the skin under the belt of her skirt before she can catch his face.

"Stupid woman, don't stand there in clear shot, they'll get you and I don't want to clean up any messes," the man informs her quite pointedly. She huffs a little in response, and half-shouts half-explains: "Well it's my first time, give me a break!"

Gokudera snorts, it is a demeaning sound and it makes her want to kick him in the shins.

Then bullets, blood – crash, bang, boom – the ambush is over.

* * *

They return to the Vongola stronghold. Haru does not call it _home_ because it far defies her meaning of home.

There is no little tulip garden, only elaborate vineyards furnished with fountains. There are no creative costumes in her closet, only glittery gowns that are worth five trips to Japan and back. And instead of a golden ring on her dresser, she has a jewellery box full of necklaces and earrings that she never wears. Tsuna's business partners seem to speak in Diamond, for everytime they attend a meeting with the Family, they produce yet another accessory for Tsuna to reluctantly present to one of the girls.

In the drawer, next to her hairbrush is a spare cartridge of bullets.

And at times she wonders why she is still in Italy, but when she sees Tsuna and the rest of her friends bustling through their lives, she thinks she might understand her heart a little bit. It is just enough to keep her sleeping under silk blankets for one more week each time.

* * *

Haru shudders to herself at night, in the middle of her big empty room, when the moon is up and the night's silence gives her the sympathy to think.

It scares her that she has grown used to this lifestyle.


End file.
